I recently met a person in a leadership role who had a belief of inadequacy as a leader as he was an introvert. His belief was hiding his strength and he was anxious about his affect as he didn’t like joining in small talk, preferred one on one meetings to team meetings, and was not really interested in lunches with the boy (and girls) and the informal social banter involved. He was concerned about his ability to engage people through change processes given his preference for one on one planning.
And yet feedback indicated that he was well respected for the leader that he was. He supported and communicated well with individual team members. He was respected for his technical and strategic knowledge and thinking and guidance of his team members.
His self-talk was telling him though that he needed to be someone else to succeed.
We spent a lot of time talking about leading from the position of “being you”. When we try to be someone we’re not we strip away the very essence of who we are and what is valuable about us to others, our unique strengths and character. We lose these unique strengths when we try to be someone we are not. Our value is in giving the best version of us there is.
Sure, successful communication and relationship skills are critical for effective leadership however Introverts can learn these by using their strengths to adapt, rather than changing the essence of who they are.
When we act from a position of acceptance and confidence in ourselves our self-talk becomes more constructive.
Instead of the self-fulfilling prophecy talk of “I’ll never be the person I need to be to lead the team successfully” we ask: “How will I use my strengths and what will I develop to be able to communicate effectively with my team to provide positive influence”? We turn destructive into constructive.
Introverts have many key qualities.
- They are listeners, a great leadership quality and a key attribute for powerful connection.
- They think things through – they are good planners and mostly strong in strategic thinking.
- They reflect a lot – quiet time for reflection is part of executive renewal, a way to reduce and manage stress.
- They are self-aware. They understand themselves and generally know their strengths and weaknesses.
A tip:
To take small talk to a different level – when someone tells you about an activity that they did at the weekend, ask them, “What is it that you like about that?” Could be bush walking for example. They are likely to tell you what it is that they love about bush walking, the quiet, staying fit, alone time, special time with family, being in nature, adventure, etc. It is likely no one has asked them this before and all of a sudden you have taken the conversation to a deeper level. There are a number of benefits. As an introvert you can connect better at this deeper level, you gain an insight into what motivates them, they appreciate your interest in them personally and best of all, all you have to do is listen!!!!
Gordon Sanderson is a Certified Social and Emotional Intelligence Coach with the Institute for Social + Emotional Intelligence (ISEI) ®. His work building highly capable leaders is based on the principles of Emotional Intelligence, Neuroscience and Strengths based coaching.
